How to get Facebook Home working on your Nexus 4 (and other devices)(Updated, no-root method found)

This is a guide being written up to get around compatibility problems with Facebook Home. Use at your own risk. This method was not discovered by us. It was discovered by Krzysztof Bryk and sent our way by Jaime Lefebvre. All credit for the find goes to them. We’re just publishing it here so people can find it!

So as you may have noticed, Facebook Home was released today. If you want to learn more about it, our review for Facebook Home is here. You may have also noticed that most phones aren’t supported. Yes, it’s silly, but for now the only a few devices can use Facebook Home including the Galaxy Note 2, Galaxy S3, and the HTC First, among others. So many people trying to install it, or even side load it, may be getting errors like the one found in the picture above. No worries, there may be a way to fix it today.

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As mentioned above, a Mr Bryk found a method that allows devices to get around this compatibility problem. It should work on any device that sports a 720p or better display. Additionally, you’ll need root access and a file explorer. Of course, there are no guarantees here. Also, this is a build.prop mod, so it should be relatively easy to do. Shall we get started?

Modding your phone to work with Facebook Home

Download the Facebook Home, Facebook, and Facebook Messenger APKs from here. These are the full and official versions of Facebook, Facebook Home, and Facebook Messenger.

Install all three APK files (you may need to change your settings to allow for installation from Unknown Sources first).

Once everything is installed, go ahead and open up Facebook Home once to make sure you get this error. It’s labeled as “Home” in your app drawer.

Now comes the fun part. Open up your favorite file manager. Navigate to /system where you’ll find the build.prop file. Be sure you make a backup of your build.prop before proceeding. Very, very important.

Not kidding, go make a back up of that build.prop please. Thank you.

Open the build.prop by long clicking and selecting to open in a text editor.

The next part is the hard part as you’ll be editing several of these lines. Edit only the lines we’ve written here and none of the others. One you’re ready, edit the followings lines:

Change ro.product.model to GT-N7100. It should look like this: ro.product.model=GT-N7100

Change ro.product.brand to samsung. It should look like this: ro.product.brand=samsung

Change ro.product.name to t03gxx. It should look like this: ro.product.name=t03gxx

Change ro.product.device to t03g. It should look like this: ro.product.device=t03g

Change ro.product.manufacturer to samsung. It should look like this: ro.product.manufacturer=samsung

Change ro.com.google.clientbase to android-samsung. It should look like this: ro.com.google.clientbase=android-samsung

Once you’re finished making all of the edits, reboot your device. Once rebooted, open Facebook Home again and it should start working! This has been tested on the Nexus 4 so far. So it will definitely work on there. The list of devices this will work on is practically unknown so the only way right now to find out if it works for you is to give it a try. Once again, it should work on any rooted device with a 720p or better screen. While Facebook Home isn’t the most wonderful app ever, people should be able to try it without waiting months for compatibility to change. If you’ve given it a try and it works, feel free to leave a comment and let us know what devices are working and which ones aren’t.

Update!

XDA user theos0o has modified the original APK to work with any device (or so the claim goes) without root. You can find more information in this XDA thread. Here’s how it works. You uninstall all Facebook apps from your device, then install the file you can download from the link. Nice and easy with no root required. Except those where Facebook is installed in /system/app (i.e. pre-installed). You folks will still need root. Enjoy!